National Caucus of Labor Committees

The National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC) is a political organization in the United States founded and controlled by political activist Lyndon LaRouche, who has sometimes described it as a "philosophical association".

LaRouche is the NCLC's founder and the political views of the NCLC are virtually indistinguishable from those of LaRouche. For more information on these views see the article "Political views of Lyndon LaRouche" as well as the main article titled "Lyndon LaRouche". An overview of the LaRouche's organizations is in "LaRouche movement".

The highest group within the NCLC is the "National Executive Committee" (NEC), described as the "inner leadership circle"[1] or "an elite circle of insiders"[2] which "oversees policy".[3] The next most senior group is the "National Committee" (NC),[2] which is reportedly "one step beneath the NEC".[4]

The organization became the NCLC in January 1969. By 1972 the group had approximately 1,000 members.[citation needed] According to the Los Angeles Times, LaRouche writes in his autobiography that in 1971 the NCLC formed "intelligence units", and the following year started training members in paramilitary tactics.[12]

According to the Village Voice and the Washington Post the NCLC became embroiled in the early 1970s in conflicts with other leftist groups, culminating in "Operation Mop-Up" which consisted of a series of physical attacks on members of rival left wing groups.[13]

A 1973 internal FBI letter recommended that the FBI provide anonymous aid to a background investigation by the Communist Party USA.

During "Operation Mop-Up," LaRouche's New Solidarity, reported NCLC confrontations with members of the Communist Party and Socialist Workers Party. One incident took place April 23, 1973 at a debate featuring Labor Committee mayoral candidate Tony Chaitkin.[14] The meeting erupted in a brawl, with chairs flying. Six people were treated for injuries at a local hospital. Following this incident, New Solidarity warned:

The clown show is over. The Labor Committee warns the Socialist Workers Party and its comrades-in-hysteria: when you did all the fighting for the Communist Party at the mayoral forum, we held back – we gave you a mild warning, though several of your members were bloodied and broken. But should you repeat as goons for the CP, we will put all of you in the hospital; we will deal with you as we are dealing with the Communist Party.

In November 1973, the FBI issued an internal memorandum that was later released under the Freedom of Information Act. Jeffrey Steinberg, LaRouche spokesperson and NCLC "director of counterintelligence",[15] described it as the "COINTELPRO memo", which he says showed "that the FBI was considering supporting an assassination attempt against LaRouche by the Communist Party USA."[16] LaRouche wrote in 1998:

The U.S. Communist Party was committed to putting the Labor Committees out of existence physically... Local law enforcement was curiously uncooperative, as they had been during prior physical attacks on myself and my friends. We knew that a 'fix' was in somewhere, probably from the FBI... We were left to our own resources. Tired of the beatings, we decided we had better prepare to defend ourselves if necessary.[17]

By the mid-1970s, the NCLC had abandoned Marxism altogether, in favor of what its members described as an American System approach. Some press accounts alleged that there was a shift to the right, and that the NCLC established ties to the Ku Klux Klan and the Liberty Lobby.[18] The conservative Heritage Foundation issued a report which states that "neither the Left nor the Right has a thoroughly-documented explanation of the organization's nature or purposes."[19]

According to the Los Angeles Times, LaRouche said he met with representatives of the Soviet Union at the United Nations in 1974 and 1975 in order to discuss attacks by the Communist Party USA on the NCLC, and to propose that the CPUSA should be merged into the NCLC. He denied receiving any assistance from the Soviets.[20]

The NCLC established a paramilitary "officers training camp" in Argyle, New York in 1974, according to an FBI report. Members learned about "small unit tactics and strategy", and trained with nunchaku. The FBI documents reportedly also mention "beatings" and "brainwashings", claim that the group moved from far-left to far-right, and complain that NCLC sent in tips about wild conspiracies.[21]

Internal FBI memo from 1975 warning about harassment of agents by NCLC members

In 1974, NCLC members admitted they had been harassing FBI agents for years.[22]

According to LaRouche in 1995, during the period 1976-1978 the NCLC ceased being a dues-paying membership organization, and made the transition to a "purely philosophical-legal organization," whose principal activities were either philosophical or in connection with legal cases against the COINTELPRO and related offenses of the FBI and associated agencies.[23]

In 1977, Costas Axios, NCLC chief of staff for New York, said of the NCLC: "We are socialist, but first we must establish an industrialist capitalist republic and rid this country of the Rockefeller anti-industrial, antitechnology monetarist dictatorship of today." According to the Washington Post, FBI memoranda of the time described the NCLC as a "clandestinely oriented group of political schizophrenics who have a paranoid preoccupation with Nelson Rockefeller and the CIA", and as a "violence-oriented Marxist revolutionary organization."[24]

The Los Angeles Times reported that by 1981, the NCLC was overseeing a network of companies and organizations that were budgeted to bring in $11.7 million in gross receipts annually. One company, Campaigner Publications Inc., was reported to have grossed $4.5 million in a four-month period. In a purported internal memo from 1981 LaRouche explained his position within the organization by saying, "I do not wish to hear, ever again, that I must wait until our legal council (sic) has assessed the wisdom of one of my decisions or that some members personal sensitivities must be taken into account...I promise you that I shall function, unrestrained, as a commanding general of a combat organization. Anyone who opposes my orders will, in the moral sense, be shot on the spot for insubordination."[25]

The NCLC was indicted on charges of obstruction of justice in 1986 and its offices were searched. Federal prosecutors alleged that LaRouche "dominates and controls" the NCLC. A U.S. government memo reportedly said that "the primary purpose" of the NCLC is to support LaRouche in a lavish lifestyle and to "courier large sums of cash to secret depositories."[27] Over a dozen NCLC members, including LaRouche himself, were eventually indicted.[28] (See also LaRouche criminal trials)

The International Caucus of Labor Committees (ICLC) was founded as the philosophical nucleus for LaRouche movement operations worldwide. According to LaRouche the ICLC follows the "model of American founding father Benjamin Franklin's 'Junto' organization."[31]

Nancy Spannaus, editor-in-chief, New Federalist, former Editor-in-Chief, New Solidarity,[42] founding member of the Schiller Institute,[59] co-author of The Political economy of the American Revolution

Jeffrey Steinberg,[60] counterintelligence director for Executive Intelligence Review, co-author of Dope, inc. : Britain's opium war against the U.S.

Webster Tarpley, former president of the Schiller Institute in the U.S.,[61] co-author of The Unauthorized Biography of George Bush[14]

Jonathan Tennenbaum, head of the European Fusion Energy Forum,[62] scientific advisor[63] to the Schiller Institute, the Executive Intelligence Review, and Lyndon LaRouche, member of the scientific advisory board of 21st Century Science & Technology,[64] author of Kernenergie: das weibliche Technik,

Carol White,[19] former editor-in-chief, 21st Century Science & Technology,[42] author, The New Dark Ages Conspiracy : Britain's Plot to Destroy Civilization and Energy Potential: Toward a New Electromagnetic Field Theory

Christopher White,[19]EIR Director,[42] co-author of The Political economy of the American Revolution

Kathy Wolfe, spokeswoman of U.S. Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon LaRouche,[65] co-author[66] of A Manual on the Rudiments of Tuning and Registration.

^Syndicated column. Jack Anderson and Les Whitten. January 30, 1978. Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC), formed "goon squads" whose members are trained in military tactics and indoctrinated in violence. An internal memo from FBI Director Clarence Kelley tells of "beatings" and "brainwashings." Back in 1974... the NCLC set up an underground "officers training camp" at Argyle, N.Y.,. where members allegedly'were tutored in military history, close order drill, weapons handling and "small unit tactics and strategy." They have also received instructions, according to the FBI, in the delicate use of the numbachutka: This is a strangulation weapon, a deadly Korean device, composed of two sticks connected by a chain...Then the group moved to the far right and began "cooperating" with the FBI. But the cooperation consisted of burdening the FBI with tips about wild conspiracies that existed only in their minds.

^"Nuclear group raises funds for right-wing party in U.S." Ross Laver. The Globe and Mail. Toronto, Ont.: Jan 2, 1980. pg. P.5. Formed in 1972, the U. S. Labor Party is an arm of the National Caucus of Labor Committees, a group that emerged from the remains of the left-wing Students for a Democratic Society.